Matthew Kolken Quoted in Yahoo News

But Matthew Kolken, a Buffalo-based immigration attorney and elected member of AILA National’s board of governors, told Yahoo News that “those of us who have been in the trenches are uniform in our concern about the way he is handling cases.” Kolken said he’s spoken to about a dozen other attorneys with expertise in deportation defense over the last week or so, and “there’s been pretty much a meeting of the minds.”

“For experts in the field, it feels like we’re watching a Holiday Inn Express commercial,” Kolken said, referring to, what he and others worry is Avenatti’s rapid-paced, one-size-fits-all approach to serving potentially vulnerable clients in a highly nuanced and incredibly complex area of immigration law.

“Obviously the reunification of the child is of paramount concern,” Kolken said, emphasizing that he does not know the specific details of Avenatti’s clients’ cases, but has years of experience defending immigrant children from deportation to countries like Guatemala. “But reuniting parent and child in the place that they fled because of unspeakable violence isn’t necessarily the answer either.”